Kenmare District forfeit highlights potential failings on both sides
WELL, we take it all back. Kind of. Maybe.
Last week we tapped a few words about the imminent county senior football championship and told of our inability to get excited about a competition that took too long to complete and was too fragmented in format, had too much dross in it and was being dominated by one team, which made it look like the majority of the rest had given up before a ball was kicked in anger or apathy.
And then along comes last weekend and we have the defending champions beaten - but not knocked out - in the first game of their title defence, while another team decide they couldn’t be bothered to show up. Oh, the excitement of it all!
Okay, we withdraw the last bit about Kenmare District not being bothered to show up. Clearly they were bothered, they just couldn’t muster the requisite 15 players to travel to Dingle to fulfil their fixture. The Kenmare District Board chairman PJ McIntyre, elsewhere in these pages, lays out the reasons for Kenmare District’s failing to field a team, and when you add up the (temporary) emigration, the work commitments and the injuries the reason seems plausible enough.
But wait! There are four teams in the District, and assuming that each one is working off the basis of 18 senior players, that leaves a group of 72 players to pick a divisional team from. Allowing for say 30 players having taken flight for the summer, or who couldn’t get out of work or who were injured, that still leaves 42 players to call on. We doubt there were too many club teams in action over the weekend with those kinds of resources at their disposal.
We don’t want to be particularly hard on the good and hardworking people involved with the Kenmare District set-up but surely the numbers would have been totted up well before Saturday morning, which was when their inability to field a team was communicated to the relevant authorities.
Just two thoughts on the whole sorry business: first, there was the suggestion through a tweet from the Kenmare Shamrocks officer Twitter account that there was a lack of interest by some players, which is disappointing and worrying that footballers would have no interest in taking part in the blue ribbon competition in the county.
And second, one of the reasons given by McIntyre was that a number of players had to work on Saturday evening, which seems reasonable enough. Kenmare and environs is a region that is very centred around the hospitality business, and it’s reasonable to assume that on a bank holiday weekend fellas would be working in bars and restaurants and other service industries.
Given the journey involved from Kenmare to Dingle for a 6.30pm match, that’s pretty much a full Saturday lost to those people. Maybe it’s time to reconsider the scheduling of certain matches when it’s reasonable to believe that players’ livelihoods, or the integrity of the competition, or both could be at stake.
As (bad) luck would have it Kenmare District have been drawn against Dr Crokes, in Killarney, in this weekend’s Losers Round. Talk about kicking a team when they’re down.